THE PROGRESS OF THE IRISH QUARREL.
WE would earnestly ask those of our readers who are still interested in Irish politics—they have grown tiresome, we know, but they are nevertheless important— to consider carefully the line which the quarrel between the two Irish factions is beginning to take. At first, the weapon in which Mr. Parnell trusted was his own personality. His single idea, reiterated until Englishmen shrank from his speeches in irrepressible weariness, was that he had led the Irish army to victory, and was deposed only by an unrighteous mutiny. That argument had less success than we should have expected, partly because the mutiny itself had broken the charm of his prestige, and partly because the Catholic Church pronounced the mutiny absolutely unavoidable. Mr. Parnell therefore slightly changed his ground, and appealed to the hillside men, exasperated the incurable dislike of a large section of the Irish to English in- fluence in any form, exaggerated the claims he intended to put forward for the independence of Ireland, and posed almost as what is called a Fenian leader. This had some effect, how much we shall not precisely know till the General Election ; but it had not enough, for North Sligo was lost in spite of it, and the loyalty of Cork so cooled, that Mr. Parnell, after promising to resign his seat, found it, on cool calculation, less dangerous to his prospects to recede from his promise,.—the weakest and probably the most injudicious act he has committed in his public career. It was necessary to find some new ground for glorifying himself and attacking his enemies which should give him a firmer foothold, and he found it on the old rock of the agrarian question. There, and only there in the Irish quagmire, is solidity. The man who can prove to shrewd Irish peasants that he is helping them to obtain freeholds, yet lowering present rents, is the man whom they will follow. Mr. Parnell, though he cares nothing about the agrarian question in itself, and, indeed, is pro- bably in sympathy a landlord, learned this lesson early in his career from Mr. Davitt, and he has never forgotten his instruction. No matter who brings forward a Land Bill, if it only contains remissions for the tenant, or a promise of assistance in purchasing the soil, Mr. Parnell always allows that Bill to pass. He fought even for Mr. Balfour when Mr. Balfour took up that side, and in Mayo on Sunday he reaped his reward, his audience enthusiastically applauding him as he rated his adversaries in no measured terms for resistance to the Bill. They, he said, had fought against a Bill which would reduce the rents of 150,000 Irish tenants by 40 per cent., and they did this out of subserviency to English Radicals, and fear lest tenants made freeholders should cease to be Home-rulers. These "cowardly Irish secessionist traitors" actually im- perilled the Bill ; "but I am glad to say that I and my faithful colleagues were on the spot, and that we defeated this attempt, and that we overwhelmed the seceding traitors with confusion and shame by exposing their plots against Ireland in the face of the world.' It was all true, except that Mr. Parnell and his small team did not make all the difference ; and the men of Mayo were de- lighted with the orator, promised him enthusiastic sup- port, gave groans for Mr. Davitt, and told their leader with humorous cynicism, that if the forty millions were a bribe, he should advocate all bribes of the same sort. So elated was Mr. Parnell with his reception, that he pro- nounced the county solid for his cause, and promised to fight on, even if it were through half-a-dozen campaigns. His adversaries have felt the blow too. They dare not defy the taunts flung at them by their opponent, and boldly justify their dilatory tactics, and are compelled to declare that, in giving up the "Plan of Campaign," which has this week been formally pronounced a failure by Mr. Harrington, Mr. Parnell has betrayed his indifference to Irish tenants. That counter-charge will not succeed, if only because both parties are equally responsible for the failure of a plan based upon spoliation, and only made possible for a moment by the wholesale bribery of tenants out of American funds. Mr. Parnell may be utterly indifferent to Irish tenants ; we should say ourselves he was utterly opposed to their main contention ; but as a matter of tactics he has fought their battle, and whenever he relies on that fact alone, the tenantry acknowledge his claim, and denounce any opponents, be they English Radicals or Irish seceders, as heartily as he could desire. If he could expand the Pur- chase Bill so as to cover all Ireland, they would defy the Church for his sake, and allow him to banish every oppo- nent from the representation of three-fourths of the whole island. A pitched battle won for the tenure, if that were now possible, would give him back his old voting strength, and compel the Gladstonians either to post- pone Home-rule, as, to do them justice, we believe they would do, or to ally themselves once more with the leader whom they have so righteously, but with such con- tempt for logic, endeavoured to expel. Such a coup has, of course, now become impossible,—first, because the seceders know Ireland too well to give him the chance ; and secondly, because the Government itself has taken his weapon out of his hands, and is itself realising, though with equity and patience instead of violence, the hope which gave all its strength to the old Land League. We mention the incident in Mayo with a sort of triumph, because we have expressed the belief which it helps to confirm, throughout the whole of this long struggle, and that in the teeth of many convinced and. experienced advocates of the Union. We have maintained from the first, that at the bottom of the Irish agitation, behind Mr. Parnell, behind even the American Fenians, was one solid Irish grievance, the detestation of the people for a tenure unsuited to their character, their history, and their social aspirations. It is not that we object to the tenure in itself. The English tenure is an excellent tenure. Socially, it covers the country with a class leisured enough to keep up a high standard of civilisa- tion, yet so dependent upon agriculture as never. to be indifferent to its improvement, or to the well-being and content of those who pursue it as an occupation. Economically, it allows the cultivator the use of the soil without depriving him of the capital without which scientific agriculture, agriculture through the associated labour which makes every other industry succeed, can never be made to pay. We have no dispute with those who hold it to be a wiser tenure than occupying pro- prietorship, and no wish in the world that in this country it should be exchanged for peasant-proprietor- ship. But the whole history of the world on three continents shows that the majority of agriculturists will not work contentedly under it, that it frightens and worries them to death, and that they will keep on upsetting political order until they have an una-- sailable hold upon the soil. They will consent to eat less, if only they may have more security. They all think, if they pay rent with eviction as penalty for non-payment, that they shall be evicted, or asked for ever-increasing rents ; and that means, to their minds, simply despair. Even peasants like the French and Belgians, who are splendidly and consistently industrious, feel this ; and the Irish, who, though industrious when obliged, love to do all things laxly, by fits, and at their own time, feel it to a degree which makes them on this subject the most unreasonable, and sometimes among the most wicked, of mankind. Crime ceases to be crime with them if it adds to security of tenure. If the Church disapproves a leader who promises freeholds, they turn a deaf ear to their Church. They will even lay aside rancours which, like all peasant rancours, are in the very substance of their blood, in order to secure their land ; and at this moment there is not a tenant in Ireland, however fierce a Fenian he may be, who has not in his heart a sneaking kindness for Mr. Balfour, because, base and bloody and brutal as he must, being the English mouth- piece, necessarily be, he is helping on a great scale to make freeholds of the farms. What on earth, with these facts before it, with Mr. Parnell voting and speaking for the Bill, with Mr. Healy afraid to denounce it, with majorities constantly growing in its favour, induces the House of Commons to tolerate so much obstruction to the Bill, we are unable even to imagine. There is not the energy of a mouse in any opponent of the Bill, except possibly Mr. Labouchere, and he would vote for it if he thought such voting would overthrow the Government ; yet it lingers along through evening after evening, amidst the dreary drip of exhausted argu- ments, as if nobody wanted it to pass. It must pass, unless the Gladstonians wish to see Tory Members re- turned for half Ireland just to help in passing it ; and we do trust the Mayo reception will give Mr. Smith the courage to apply the Closure with greater determination. Nothing takes the heart out of politics like endless dis- cussion of a measure about which nobody has anything real to say, which nobody at heart considers unwise, and which, whether it be unwise or not, is recognised as imperative under conditions which there exists no power to change.
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